Two New Abe Cabinet Members Suspected Of Nazi Party Ties

Screen shot of Japan Nazi Party

Two newly-promoted Japanese politicians moved Monday to distance themselves from allegations of extremism after pictures emerged of them posing alongside the leader of a domestic neo-Nazi party.

Internal Affairs Minister Sanae Takaichi and party policy chief Tomomi Inada are seen in separate photographs next to Kazunari Yamada on the home page of the National Socialist Japanese Workers Party.

The pictures will add fuel to claims that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is increasingly surrounding himself with people on the right of Japanese politics.

Yamada’s blog postings indicate admiration for Adolf Hitler and praise for the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

In video footage posted on the website, Yamada is seen wearing a stylised swastika during street demonstrations.

Captions for the photographs claim they were taken “sometime in June or July 2011 when (Yamada) visited the conservative lawmakers for talks”. 

Spokesmen for both senior lawmakers acknowledged Monday that the photographs were genuine and had been taken in their offices over the last few years, but denied there was any political affiliation.

“He was an assistant for an interviewer, and was taking notes and photos,” a member of staff at Takaichi’s office told AFP, referring to Yamada.

“We had no idea who he was back then, but he requested a snap shot with her. (The minister) wouldn’t refuse such requests.”

Following media inquiries, the office has asked that the pictures be removed, he said.

“It was careless of us,” he said, adding that Takaichi did not share Yamada’s view “at all… it is a nuisance”.

A staffer at Inada’s office said the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) policy chief did not subscribe to Nazi ideology.

“It is disappointing if there are people who would misunderstand that she does,” he said.

Abe has courted criticism for his strident nationalism and views on history that some find unpalatable.

In particular, his unwillingness to condemn Imperial Japan’s behavior up to and during World War II has proved a sticking point in international relations.

His equivocations about the formalised system of sex slavery—known euphemistically as “comfort women”—has particularly irked South Korea and China, and both regularly call on him to re-think his views.

Abe’s new 18-strong cabinet, announced last week, includes a number of people with hawkish views.

Takaichi and Inada have both visited Yasukuni Shrine, the supposed repository of the souls of Japan’s war dead, including a number of convicted war criminals. The shrine is seen in Asia as a symbol of Japan’s lack of repentance for the war.

Site of The Japanese Nazi Party 

AFP

Productivity: Why Abenomics Is Failing

Abenomics is failing.  It is obvious, and nothing PM Shinzo Abe nor the yes people in his cabinet say can change that.  The facts are all too obvious.  Unemployment is still at a high and has been since he took office.  Real GDP is almost 9% down.  25% of the Japanese population is over 65 and it will now officially increase each year until 2050 when the population will be 70% over 65 and then the Japanese population will decrease from an estimated 80,000,000.

Tokyo has failed to answer these problems and it is causing a rising feeling of distrust for Abe and all in the LDP.

The biggest problem not being address aside from those is the monster not even being addressed at all: negative productivity.

If reform were easy, it would have been accomplished long ago. The problem is that reforms aimed at promoting competition would hurt many entrenched firms and their workers. Since a Japanese worker’s current job at his current firm is his main social safety net, a desire to avoid social dislocation is the main reason Japan protects moribund firms. To ease the pain of reform, Tokyo should use fiscal and monetary stimulus as an anesthesia.

In the past, Japan has enacted reforms that worked, such as deregulating the financial market, forcing resistant banks to clean up the massive nonperforming loans that were hamstringing economic growth, ending laws that allowed small stores to block the entry of larger ones into their neighborhoods, and giving new entrants in the cell-phone business equal access to the mobile infrastructure of a previously dominant monopoly. These reforms ushered in huge productivity gains in retail and telecommunications (and for users of telecom), while partially unlocking distribution channels for newcomers. 

Nothing in Abe’s program, however, remotely resembles those advances. His proposed agricultural reform, for example, would merely replace a subsidy focused on production levels with one focused on income, while giving no incentives for tiny inefficient farms to consolidate or for agribusiness to expand sufficiently. His talk of increasing career opportunities for women omits any mention of the main obstacle: that most of them get taken off the promotion track once they become pregnant. And while Abe has raised taxes on consumers, he is talking about cutting taxes on corporations. His claim that this would promote investment is false, as even the Ministry of Finance acknowledges. Japan’s corporate giants already have far more cash than they choose to invest at home. But a corporate tax cut might raise stock prices and gain Abe more corporate support.  Reshuffle the cabinet all you wish, bring in more and more women, but until productivity is addressed everything attempted will fail.

His plans for the electricity sector, meanwhile, would ostensibly allow room for newcomers by separating generation from transmission. In reality, the existing regional electric monopolies will be allowed to form a holding company that controls both parts. He has done nothing to force rectification in the nuclear utilities, some of which falsified their safety records with the connivance of the regulators in the lead-up to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. As a result, a justifiably distrustful population has so far blocked a restart of the reactors that previously supplied a third of the country’s electricity. The resulting electricity shortfall and higher energy costs are propelling automakers and other efficient exporters to shift even more of their capacity overseas. All told, the third arrow has turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of nice-sounding goals for growth, job creation, and investment -- without a plan for achieving any of them.

The most obvious litmus test of the third arrow is Abe’s handling of the negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In recent months, these talks have stalled largely because Abe’s team has insisted on keeping tariffs and other barriers high in a few agricultural sectors (such as beef, dairy, and pork) that employ less than 100,000 households but where high prices boost Japan Agriculture’s income. As of mid-May, an agreement had not been reached. Even if a deal is eventually signed, Abe’s capitulation to small interest groups means that it won’t be used as a catalyst for domestic reform, unlike the way South Korea used its trade agreements with the United States and Europe, and as reformist officials in the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry have urged Japan to do as well.  If Japan flinches and does not sign onto the TPP then Japan will watch China, South Korea, and the USA improve while Japan withers even further into debt, deficits, and more negative productivity.

Abe certainly has the clout to take on these vested interests: he still enjoys an approval rating around 50 percent, and his party holds an overwhelming majority in parliament. Yet it seems impossible to find a single case in which the prime minister has truly challenged a powerful domestic constituency. Instead, he is wasting his political capital on denying seven-decade-old war crimes and refusing even to admit that Japan committed aggression, claiming Japanese ownership of islets long controlled by South Korea, and trying to change school textbooks to reflect these retrograde views. Even when Abe’s ideas on security are sensible -- such as his proposals for Japan to exercise a right to collective self-defense -- the need to overcome resistance in pacifistic Japan diverts Abe’s energy. Inevitably, this puts the third arrow on the back burner.  Relations with China and South Korea must be improved or Japan will be ignored by its two important neighbors.

The sad fact is that Abe’s heart does not beat to the rhythm of reform and revival. Instead, Abenomics is a means to an end: to gain enough popular support to pursue the goals that really move him -- security and history issues. But Abe can stay insulated from the political consequences of his economic mismanagement for only so long. Eighty percent of Japanese polled say that his policies have failed to improve their lives at all. Abe remains popular because people still expect Abenomics to start working. Sooner or later, however, its failures will become impossible to ignore, and Abe will lose the political power to make necessary reforms -- even if he somehow gained the stomach for them.

Japan will eventually reform and revive. Its tragedy is that it is filled with smart, ambitious, creative individuals who are trapped in once vibrant but now ossified political and economic institutions. The whole is so much less than the sum of its parts. The country will revive when it finally undertakes the necessary institutional overhaul. But that takes a visionary leader; Abe is not that leader.

Richard Katz

Abe Shuffles Cabinet

PM Abe and new cabinet

 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe carried out Wednesday his first Cabinet reshuffle since returning to office in December 2012 with the aim of tightening his grip on power.

Abe retained close allies such as Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga and Finance Minister Taro Aso in key posts while increasing the number of female ministers to a record-tying five from two in line with his policy of raising women's status in society.

Among the five, Yuko Obuchi, the second daughter of the late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, was appointed trade minister, and Sanae Takaichi will serve as internal affairs minister after holding the position as chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's Policy Research Council.

Junichiro Koizumi's Cabinet had five female ministers between April 2001 and September 2002.

Abe has set a goal of raising the proportion of women in leadership positions in both the public and private sectors to at least 30 percent by 2020.

Also on the roster is health minister Yasuhisa Shiozaki, a former chief Cabinet secretary who supports reform of the Government Pension Investment Fund by diversifying investments.

The reshuffle came as Abe faces a host of challenges at home and abroad, including whether to go ahead with another tax hike after the economy was shaken by a consumption tax increase in April, and whether ties with China and South Korea, frayed over territorial and history disputes, can be repaired.

LDP Secretary General Shigeru Ishiba, a potential rival to Abe in a future party leadership race, took one of the two newly created Cabinet posts, which is aimed at boosting regional economies.

Ishiba had declined Abe's offer of another new post to work on national security legislation, saying the differences in views between him and Abe will be targets of criticism from opposition parties if he were to speak from that position in parliamentary debate.

The post of security legislation minister was assumed by former Senior Vice Defense Minister Akinori Eto, who will double as defense minister.

The public approval rating for the Abe Cabinet has recently dropped to around 50 percent from a peak of over 70 percent several months after the launch of his second administration in December 2012.

When Abe first served as prime minister in 2006 and 2007, his Cabinet was short-lived. But his just-dissolved one set a post-World War II record as the longest-serving Cabinet with no changes in its lineup at 617 days.

Earlier Wednesday, Abe's LDP endorsed the appointment of new executives, led by Sadakazu Tanigaki as secretary general. Tanigaki was LDP leader when the Democratic Party of Japan was in power from 2009 to 2012.

Tomomi Inada, state minister in charge of administrative reform, was named chairwoman of the LDP Policy Research Council, while Toshihiro Nikai, head of the House of Representatives Budget Committee, will chair the LDP decision-making General Council.

Kyodo

Fukushima Workers Sue TEPCO For Pay

 

Four workers employed in decommissioning the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant are to sue operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) and some subcontractors.  They are demanding millions of yen in unpaid danger money, their lawyer said on Tuesday.

The four men, two of whom are still working at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, will demand the companies pay a total of 65 million yen, mostly in hazard allowances.

The workers, whose ages range from those in their 30s to their 60s, say they have not been properly compensated for the risks their work entails, including removing contaminated debris and patrolling at the plant. 

The suit will be filed with the Iwaki branch of the Fukushima District Court on Wednesday, according to lawyer Tsuguo Hirota.

It is the first time that workers still employed at the plant have launched legal action against TEPCO over remuneration and working conditions, despite widespread reports of exploitation and abuses.

“My health may be harmed some day… I believe there are many people who can’t speak out about this kind of (underpaying) problem,” one of the workers told public broadcaster NHK.

“I may get fired or may be given no further work. But I hope people will take this as an opportunity to speak up and get paid,” he said.

A massive tsunami triggered by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake in March 2011 smashed into the plant on Japan’s northeastern coast, sending reactors into meltdown and contaminating a wide area.

TEPCO, one of the world’s largest utilities, has routinely used several layers of contractors and subcontractors in the clean-up and decommissioning work at Fukushima.

Of the 6,000 people working at the plant every day over the last two months, only a handful are directly employed by TEPCO. Allegations continue to swirl that organized crime has had a hand in staffing subcontractors at the bottom of the food chain.

The sometimes murky arrangements mean that despite pledges by TEPCO of extra cash for employees, it is often difficult to tell if the money filters through to the people at the sharp end, or is skimmed off at one of the many intermediary levels.

TEPCO had no immediate comment on the case, but said it would wait to hear what the plaintiffs said in court.

The Bureaucrats - Japan's Unelected Real Power

 

When former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama took office five years ago, his aides begged Japan's senior bureaucrat, a man who had served seven Prime Ministers, to stay on for fear that the Government would descend into chaos without him.

Japan's Prime Minister heads the Government, of course, but some say that to encounter real power one must talk to the bureaucrats who effectively write the laws and really run the country.

Far more than in the West, the best and the brightest of Japan have chosen to sit for the grueling civil service exams and work for Government ministries. And while they are given cramped housing and low salaries, the governing system gives them the right to make most of the nation's policy virtually unhampered by politicians. With the election of LDP Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the fate of bureaucrats is secure.

"Kanryo," or bureaucrat, has generally been a neutral term in the minds of many Japanese, but in recent months it has become a tainted title. After a spate of colossal mistakes, the national trust in the bureaucracy has collapsed. The young men (and, very occasionally, women) who aced every test in school and ended up in the ministries are facing growing calls for a fundamental reallocation of power from their hands to elected politicians and the people.

Japanese bureaucrats essentially answer to no one, not the Cabinet ministers, not the Prime Minister and not the party leaders.

The Prime Minister has a small staff, which relies on the 12 ministries and the 260,000 bureaucrats who work in them. The ministers are political appointees who sail in above bureaucrats in title, but who are actually beholden to them for policy and background information.

Ministers speaking to politicians in Parliament often reply this way to questions, "Since this is an important issue, I must turn the floor over to the Government officials."

When a Cabinet minister dismissed a bureaucrat two years ago, an uproar erupted because ministers rarely make personnel decisions. In fact, they do not even bring in their own people, but inherit the top career officials who dominate policymaking in each ministry.

One result, critics say, is that bureaucrats have become alienated from the wishes of the people.

"They are in a different world from us ordinary people," said Nobuko Serizawa, a graduate student in economics. "The system is so murky, and they should be criticized for their inability to respond to the public."

The power and apathy of the bureaucracy has come with these revelations:

*Bureaucrats at the Health Ministry ignored warnings that blood supplies were contaminated with the virus that causes AIDS and for years resisted allowing imports of sterilized blood. A result was many deaths from AIDS among Japanese hemophiliacs.

*Ministry of Finance bureaucrats allowed banks and mortgage lenders to accumulate billions of dollars in bad loans, often through cozy relations with gangsters. Now the ministry is asking taxpayers to pay $6.5 billion in just the first installment of an Abe inspired clean-up plan.

*There was a cover-up after a minor accident at a nuclear reactor, making Japanese lose confidence in the competence and safety assurances of bureaucrats running the nation's reactor program.  Let us not forget Fukushima Daiichi and the revelations of how bureaucrats and industry conspired to move around safety procedures and standards to get the plant online in 1972.

*The police for years ignored the rise of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult, even as it was accused of killing its critics.

*The Government was paralyzed by the huge 2011 earthquake that devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant that TEPCO ran. It seems that many might have been saved if the authorities had acted more quickly.

Few people are as pained and angered by the bureaucratic incompetence as a 46-year-old real estate entrepreneur, a hemophiliac who became infected with the AIDS virus through tainted blood. A mild-mannered man who keeps his condition a secret for fear of social discrimination, he now helps lead a group of victims filing a suit against Health Ministry bureaucrats.

"If they had known they would have to take responsibility for decisions they make, then I don't think this kind of virtual murder could have happened," he said.

About 400 hemophiliacs and other former hospital patients have already died and thousands more now have H.I.V. because bureaucrats promoted the use of tainted blood for hemophiliacs and banned sterilized blood from being imported into Japan. Ministry bureaucrats finally allowed sterilized blood to be imported in mid-1985, after all major countries had already approved the new clotting agents, which are treated with heat to kill viruses.

Only after the election of the DPJ's Yukio Hatoyama in 2009 has there been any serious discussion of taking on the bureaucrats.  What stood in the way of reform was the LDP and bureaucrats forming an alliance to bring down the DPJ, as both were afraid revelations of bribes, kick backs, and extortion would be brought to light.  Hatoyama was destroyed by the LDP and bureaucrat alliance.  After Hatoyama the DPJ instilled Kan who was brought down for his handling of the 2011 eartquake and tsunami.  Then Noda was displaced by the LDP rebirth in December 2012 when the LDP was brought back into power.

Many critics argue that amakudari is central to the bureaucracy's failure in recent years. Officials of the Health Ministry, for example, may have been sympathetic to pharmaceutical companies because their ex-colleagues were working there or because they themselves were looking for posts in the industry within a few years.

There is already a restriction preventing bureaucrats from taking jobs in such companies until two years after their retirement. But some in the Finance Ministry have proposed making that five years. Of course there is no restriction against bureaucrats going into politics, and many do run for office.  Many also are appointed to major universities as "research and advisory" positions.

"Japanese bureaucrats are too powerful," said Matsuzo Nakamura, a 56-year-old machinery salesman. "We have to use any opportunity to revolutionize the bureaucratic system."

Sheryl Wu Dunn

Fukushima Negatively Impacting Wildlife

 

Dr Timothy Mousseau, professor of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina and researcher for the Chernobyl and Fukushima Research Initiative, presented new findings to the International Ornithological Congress in Tokyo last week that suggest radiation contamination around Fukushima Daiichi, even at low levels, is negatively impacting biodiversity and wildlife populations.

Mousseau and his collaborators have been monitoring radiation levels at 1,500 sites and bird populations at 400 points across Fukushima over the last 3 years. The lay of the land and dispersal patterns of radioactive matter have created a very heterogenous situation in the Fukushima exclusion zone, meaning areas of high radiation lie right alongside areas of low radiation. By controlling for other environmental factors, the scientists can apply a rigorous statistical analysis to predict what the population in a particular area should be.

Using this method, Mousseau et al have found both the number of birds and the variety of species drop off as radiation levels rise, and more importantly, that there is no threshold under which the effect isn’t seen.

This is counter to what both the Japanese government and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation have said regarding low-level radiation. In a report on the situation in Fukushima released in April, UNSCEAR said, “Exposures of both marine and terrestrial non-human biota following the accident were, in general, too low for acute effects to be.

observed,” although the report goes on to hedge that “changes in biomarkers cannot be ruled out.” Indeed, Mousseau and the Wild Bird Society of Japan report seeing partial albinism in Fukushima birds, a condition rarely seen outside of Chernobyl (see photo below).

Citing years of research in Chernobyl and meta-analysis of studies on areas with naturally occurring radiation, Mouseau says, “Contrary to government reports, there is now an abundance of information demonstrating consequences, in other words, injury, to individuals, populations, species, and ecosystem function stemming from low-dose radiation.”

What we need now, he continues, is more funding for research into what this means in the long term, for the flora and fauna of Fukushima, as well as for the people who live alongside them.

Jessica Kokusa